The advent of a global communication network, e.g., the Internet, has facilitated connectivity to a wide variety of devices from most anywhere in the world. Initially, these communication devices included what is now considered to be rudimentary one-way signaling, for example, to a pager. However, portable devices are now much more sophisticated facilitating bi-directional communication not only in textual content, but with voice and image content as well. Storage and memory capabilities in such smaller mobile devices are increasing, further facilitating the exchange of full content information from almost anywhere. Thus users need not carry all of the information with them, but simply connect remotely to a home station to access the information desired. With the increasing mobility of employees and the need to access vast amounts of information, this capability provides the remote user with ready access to information to better serve the employer and customers.
However, presently, there is no mechanism for Internet users to facilitates a remote desktop connection, e.g., a terminal services connection, to access a client computer within an intranet network, behind a firewall and/or router, without first requiring virtual private network (VPN) rights or a statically configured path through the router and firewall. Connecting to the network via VPN and then using terminal services to access a client is complicated and awkward. Moreover, maintaining a static route from the Internet to an internal client is a security risk.
What is needed is a tool that enables remote desktop connections to be made from outside an intranet firewall and/or router to a client computer behind the firewall and/or router, sidestepping both negative aspects of VPN connectivity and security vulnerabilities.